Dan, with horror on his face and momentarily frozen in place as if he couldn't move, forced out: "Water pumps?"
"That's another surprise. Come on. You must be wondering, 'What for?' Imagine an aerial view: where the house is, where the pond is, and where you walked underground," Michal said, urging him towards the back of the ship.
Still stiff and with terror in his eyes, Dan slowly walked back to Michal. "So this hangar leads to the pond," Dan said with certainty.
"Yeah, it camouflages my entrance," Michal confirmed. Dan had reached him by then, so Michal said, "Prepare for a pleasant distraction." And he moved a large lever next to some kind of display upwards. The entire ship lifted slightly and began to levitate 10 cm above the rail. The rail, to top it off, lit up with tiny red lights along its sides, and then the back of the ship opened.
It happened in such a way that its rear sloped section unfolded into 4 equally sized pieces, which opened outwards like the petals of a flower.
"You know, I have a lot I still want to show you. Oh, and in front of strangers from now on, don't call me great-grandpa, but just by my first name, Michal, or even better, just the initial M, so it's not immediately clear to them that we're related," Michal said.
"Why? What strangers? And you want me to call you M like some kind of agent?" Dan asked.
"Yes. Exactly," Michal confirmed and went inside.
Dan felt a chill again and experienced a momentary feeling of derealization, where his brain was overloaded by the realities that were pouring down on him, and he just watched the world around him as if he were seeing it through the eyes of someone else entirely, while his brain raced and overheated under the weight of realizing reality.
The rear of the TAC-T3.5 was, at least in the seating arrangement, similar to the Vegas. The seats faced each other, and a small aisle led between them to the cockpit. Instead of poles, however, there were small and thin transparent partitions between them. Safety harnesses, like on a roller coaster, were also attached to the headrests of the seats. Above the seats were additional compartments with storage space, like in an airplane, and conversely, from the bottom of the seats, a series of cables ran along the floor to the center of the ship. There, lying on the floor, was a visibly advanced and also slightly yellowish glowing plate. The plate, together with the visible cables, was protected by a large transparent layer of probably some kind of durable Plexiglas, which became the new floor. Finally, there was a difference in the overall design between the T3.5 and the Vega. The T3.5 was far more stylish and set in a white-black-blue color combination.
"What you're looking at is my improvised teleportation platform. It consumes a lot of power, but in a moment of extreme emergency, it can help, under ideal conditions, even up to 500 meters away, which, to be honest, is usually not the case in moments of emergency, but it simply works, with limited range, but yes, and I see that as a great success of mine. Ordinary T3s don't have that," Michal informed him, already sitting behind the open partition to the cockpit in the first pilot's seat.
Dan came up to him and sat down next to him in the second pilot's seat in front of a wide and slightly curved console with control panels.
"Ready?" Michal asked, and his mechanical head turned to look at Dan.
"Yeah, I can. Just… does this ship also have shields, or is that just sci-fi?" Dan asked, still slightly apprehensive but also terribly curious.
"But of course it does. Transport and defensive. The transport shield runs all the time, canceling out g-forces and anything that would worsen the flight experience, and the defensive shield is for defense against weapons," Michal replied.
"So you can also travel between planets with it?" Dan asked, even more astonished.
"Well, not really. This one can only travel between planets within one system. So just to Mars or at most to Neptune. Going any further doesn't make much sense; for that, you need a space tunnel. But that just really didn't fit in here, and this ship doesn't have the power source for it. But I hope that you'll soon see a ship capable of traveling between systems," Michal explained, and his electronic face smiled with a peculiar grimace.
"So what?" he said again in a caring tone.
"Yeah… yeah, it's subsiding. Slowly, but it's not getting worse," Dan confirmed.
"Then don't think about it at all. We're flying," Michal concluded and confirmed something on his panel. The rear doors of the T3.5 closed, and transparent screens with indicators extended from the panels both in front of Dan and Michal. In addition, a holographic path and tilt indicators, like in a fighter jet, appeared on the front window.
"Reminder, don't be scared, we're taking off through the pond," Michal said with a satisfied smirk.
"And how do you handle the water?" Dan countered.
"On the sides of the rail are those pumps I was talking about a while ago; they'll replenish the water level. Okay, 3. 2. 1."
Water gushed into the hangar. It looked like a tsunami was rushing towards them. As soon as the water touched the ship, the ship made a strange humming sound, as if it had already started to suck it in. When the water had completely filled the entire hangar, the ship suddenly shot forward. It accelerated rapidly, and its flight path curved more and more rapidly into a vertical climb. And then suddenly there was the blue sky. The T3.5 immediately returned to a horizontal position, and the horizon appeared before them. The whole ship was making a strange, gentle humming sound, and trees and villages were rushing by quickly around them. It was only a moment, and Prague could already be seen in front of them.
"It's flying very fast. Can't it be slowed down?" Dan asked. And as he asked, a mechanical sound was heard, and the ship began to slow down.
"Wings. Now we'll fly about as fast as a sightseeing plane," Michal reported.
"Good," Dan remarked.
"Yeah, wings are good, but using them during an escape isn't the best. During combat, they're easy to hit, and moreover, they're half outside the shield bubble," Michal said. They reached Prague and slowly circled above the apartment blocks.
"Why are you even telling me this?" Dan asked suspiciously.
"I'm leaving this to you too, so you know what to do with it," Michal replied.
"But why did you mention combat? Do you think I should know how to fight with that ship?" Dan pressed further.
"Actually, yes. It never hurts. For example, I've already been in battle with this ship," Michal said.
"And who did you fight with?" Dan asked with concern.
"Are you ready for the continuation? Good. Well, generally with a variety of aliens. Of course, not all of them attacked this particular ship directly; I mean, this is far from the only or the largest ship I've ever piloted. But in short, every time I showed up in something in space, sooner or later someone came after me."
"All aliens are hostile?"
"No, a large number are not. That wasn't it entirely. They just sometimes misunderstood me. It's far more complicated, but my department for humanizing alien technologies and, indeed, my colleague Veronika played a certain role in it." And then he began to tell a lengthy story: "You know, it was work for NATO. And as I said, our task was to humanize alien technologies as efficiently as possible. It was going well, but there was Veronika, and... It's really a long story. How can I shorten it... Well, you know how they say that geniuses are a little crazy? She was definitely that type. It was more complicated, but the important thing is that she had a certain vision of how things should be. How to ensure that society was run as efficiently as possible. That included that she eventually wanted to transform the entire population into genetically identical and, according to her, perfect beings. To simply create perfect clones of everyone. But the problem was that someone still had to perform the less attractive jobs in her vision of society, and if everyone was perfect, there would be no one to do them. And so the only thing that wasn't perfect about their clones was their heads. She introduced categories for people, such intelligence castes. They were simply the letters A, B, C."
"Wait, you're saying it like it happened?" Dan interrupted Michal.
"Sss... Yes, it happened on a very small scale, and fortunately not on Earth, that's why it was discovered quite late. She had the same knowledge of humanizing alien technologies as I did, and that made it a lot easier for her. When there was no technology on Earth for something in her plan, it usually existed elsewhere in the local block of the universe, and with her knowledge, it was no problem for her to start using that technology or to crossbreed it with what she already had." And Michal immediately returned to the long explanation of Veronika's vision: "Well, so her categories of people simply consisted of A people being the smartest, B the average ones who usually never achieve anything great, and C, those were the ones who did the least attractive jobs... People were born there, or rather, created, with a predetermined fate. If parents wanted their child to be someone smart, they paid astronomical prices, and only if there was a vacancy in that A or B category. She ensured obedience through quality ideological brainwashing, a strict legal system including the death penalty, calculated populist rewards, and a false religion for the Cs, where she positioned herself as a goddess and thus claimed the patent on truth. She then used those same deluded people as laborers, among other things, to mine rare raw materials and subsequently build a number of ships. She then used those ships to spread her ideology and fight against those who tried to stop her, so all of us. A clear definition of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. We managed to interrupt it, but then the question arose of what to do with those several thousand people. We didn't agree, and I left the army and the program itself because of that and... many other reasons. I even took care of smaller groups of these people myself. Well, in short, I was then labeled Veronika's successor and had to hide. Meanwhile, a few former friends joined me, and we built our own base together, where we developed new technologies and occasionally built smaller spaceships."
It sounded like a very simplified story to Dan, and technically speaking, it was, however, it also seemed to him that Michal was keeping a few important details to himself. Perhaps it was just that Michal was trying to shorten the story as much as possible and highlight only the most important things, or maybe not. He would see if Michal would answer all his questions.
"But what happened to those people after you took care of them?" Dan asked.
"A long story, they were doing well. They made up the crew on my Dreadnought. However, after the battle at the planet Georus, where my Dreadnought was destroyed, I haven't seen them. Don't worry, they evacuated, but where they are now..." and it sounded like Michal didn't know, however, Michal just deliberately didn't finish the answer so he wouldn't have to lie to Dan. He knew where those people had evacuated to, but now was not the right time to reveal that.
Dan was surprised and asked, "Wait, YOUR Dreadnought was destroyed?"
"Ah, right, you don't know that either. For a time, I owned it completely. Besides, it's kind of mine anyway. I consider myself at least its spiritual father. The design, construction, and software, I had a hand in everything. Of course, I didn't do it all myself, that would be a superhuman feat, but I did the control algorithms, new technical solutions, including inventing the components themselves, here and there. So basically, the whole Dreadnought was created the way I wanted it. You're wondering why? Well… yes, correctly, also a long history. I'll try to shorten it again. Originally, the ship that is now the Dreadnought was supposed to be part of the war fleet of the Alliance of Planets, and it was supposed to be just one of the Earth cruisers. At that time, Earth was involved in a war of 5 planets against 6 others. We didn't fight directly, we just supplied weapons and raw materials in exchange for knowledge. Towards the end, we eventually started supplying ships as well. Nobody had high expectations for them, because humans were only just catching up to the aliens at that time. How I even got involved with the army and ship building is an even longer story, definitely a book's worth. I was simply there. Well, and what happened then. My cruiser, to everyone's surprise, performed quite well in space battles, considering it was built only by humans. Suddenly, completely out of nowhere, Veronika came into everything, or rather her insane alter-ego Verrill, and that completely changed the whole situation. That is, the arrival of someone like Veronika paradoxically benefited the whole situation at the time. The main enemy was suddenly her, and all the planets suddenly went only against her. Then came that touching moment when we joined forces with our enemies, and we all suddenly began to strengthen my promising cruiser with our knowledge, to the form of a 2 km Dreadnought. Due to my very detailed knowledge of Veronika, I'll get to that, and the production of quality warships, I was appointed head of the entire project. That boosts one's self-confidence when 12 planets do what you say. Not literally, but you understand. So that's the origin of my Dreadnought in a nutshell, and what I have to do with it. But to get back to Veronika herself and why it was necessary for someone like me to oversee the fight against her. You see, while she was normal, she wasn't just my colleague, but also my girlfriend, and I don't deny that there was even the possibility of marriage, so I knew her well. Looking back, it's crazy and surreal, I know, but that's how it s-i-m-p-l-y was. I had no idea at the time. An ordinary work acquaintance. That's why people from strategy even came to me from time to time and asked me what Veronika would probably do. I was simply the center of general interest at the time. I was actually a kind of celebrity of the hidden history of the world. The Jaspitusans could already have me and Veronika in modern history textbooks."
"That sounds almost fairy-tale-like. So what went so terribly wrong?" Dan said.
"Ehh. The biggest problem came when I hijacked the Dreadnought."
Comments (0)
See all